Rant, Car Dealers

[kurt]

I signed papers several years ago with a well known Georgetown Dodge dealer. I took the truck home and two days later got a call saying they needed more down payment to make the deal work. I had apparently signed a conditional contract and ended up returning the vehicle the next day. I'll bet the next owner wasn't happy about the holes I drilled in the rear bulkhead for my SL-20 flashlight.

 

[breakingcontact]

Also, Chargers are terrible cars. I work on several for a local PD. Every time the temperature swings, coolant leaks galore. IMO you dodged a bullet (no pun intended).

Why you got to Challenge-r him?

I was once in the process of buying a used car on a lot. But oops! They put the wrong price on the car! But dont you know they had another one to sell me at a higher price. No thanks.

 

[breakingcontact]

Ive come to the realization that the best move is to buy a used car for cash only. New or maybe 1 year old car get a loan on but keep the car for 10+ years

 

[tmd11111]

Coming from 10 years in the car business I'll tell you exactly what happened. You signed a conditional contract. Some less than honest dealers do this for one reason and one reason only. Some customers credit are marginal and what they did is sign you up to take you out of the market while they try to get you bought buy one of their lenders. Usually they put you in the car though then either call you back to get the car back because they couldn't get you bought or the get a conditional call from a lender. When this happens they either cut the price to the call, get more money down, or switch cars. And yes if you have steller credit a 60 month loan on an 06 isnt a problem.

 

[Glockster69]

.
I've read the thread cover-cover. My takeaway.

Come back in a few days should raise a flag.
Every tech and salesman will have taken a joyride and brought it back all lathered up and tongue hanging out.


On the surface, it appears you got the better end of this deal by walking away.
Something doesn't smell right.

^^^ Experience talking?

I need to carry a couple of guns instead of just one, to keep my feet on the ground...lol
But.... man o man, that SRT8 was a blast......

Lol ... Lots of great rides out there. Enjoy them, but make a good deal.

Best of luck to ya ...

 

[M. Sage]

Where are the coolant leaks at?

Sent from my DROID RAZR using Tapatalk

The cars are all 5.7 "Hemi" (not real Hemis, but Dodge calls 'em that) engines. Leaks are water pump gasket, thermostat gasket and/or timing cover gasket. Have experienced erosion of the timing cover sufficient that we've had to replace them on all the dept's cars. We've also seen three of the fleet (and this is a small department, so that's nearly half their cars) eat up camshafts, I think due to extended idle. Still... A car with under 80K miles should not be experiencing major mechanical failures at such a low mileage these days. They do a decent job of getting timely oil changes, and we do use the proper fluids.

The suspensions have failures here and there... typical Mercedes E class shit (which is where they "borrowed" that suspension from) like the bushings for the struts going bad, and the radius arm bushings wearing out. The transmission also likes to leak at the transmission connector bushing, which is a common Mercedes issue (again, where they "borrowed" the assembly from). If you don't take care of that, not only do you have a leak, but ATF can creep up the trans harness and cause major problems when it gets inside modules, if it doesn't cause crazy issues by simply causing shorts between pins in the trans connector.

I've got an '07 SRT8, no leaks here.

Funny you mention temperature though, when the temp drops the car REALLY wakes up. The factory tune pulls a LOT of ignition timing pretty much whenever the motor is at operating temp lol.

I wonder how different the 6.4 is from the 5.7... All the cop cars I work on (with the exception of one car for their warrant guy) are 5.7s, and IMO that engine is garbage.

Agreed, the SAPD got several to test and decided to go with the new Fords. I heard they had a lot electrical issues as well. They've been relegated to traffic duty...

Haven't really seen many electrical issues. Common for the cars we work on to end up with a dead battery after sitting from Saturday afternoon to Monday morning, but I always figured that was the crap the cops installed in their own cars.

Though, all of them do seem to have TPMS lights on that can't be turned off no matter what. The cops ignore the lights, so I do, too... Tires are always set at factory spec by us, though it's not at all uncommon for the cars to come into the shop with as much as 50 psi in the tires. I guess they don't care if they can turn or not...

The department is retiring the Chargers and changing over to Explorers. Have a couple good pics of a heavy gauge positive cable one of the cops installed (literally - the officers did their own equipment installs on these cars, saw it with my own eyes) that was resting against the exhaust just downstream of the cat, and was almost burned through and shorted to ground.

 

[Brains]

There's a recall on the NAG1 harness plug, did that one when it was pretty new. I've been kinda lazy in bringing it in for the fan recall. Apparently the fan will fall off the shaft in hot weather and tear up the radiator. The E class nonsense goes further too - the open differential, with wheel spin mitigated by brake application? Garbage. The throttle response - never the same twice, never consistent, both in opening rate and delay. Infuriating. The shift logic, oh whoever wrote the trans calibration obviously thought this thing was a diesel.

But those are mostly gripes. I've got a nagging problem nobody has been able to fix, so I've been dealing with it for years. The car simply refuses to properly reassign the tire pressure sensors to the correct corner of the car. They read fine, just at the wrong location.

But the motor? Can't complain too much there. It's a lot like the LS platform from GM. It's VERY picky which oil you run, though. Too thin, and you'll have a ton of racket from the lifters on startup before they pump up. I imagine the 5.7 with the MDS junk adds some potential for problems, but GM has those too. Mainly failures in oiling the lifters and camshaft, which will wipe out a lobe or two. I personally haven't heard of any 6.1/6.4's tearing up cams, so I imagine that's the culprit. It would make sense with extended idling too. Ever checked the oil pressure at idle? Probably scary low after sitting a few minutes. That could probably be fixed with an oil pump change.

Police duty issues are often related to extended idling. It would be a political pain, but a diesel fleet really would make more sense.